[PEN-L:1309] Re: Russia in emergency talks with IMF

["Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

Gary,
     There have been some rumblings about the Baltic Fleet
becoming rebellious, so maybe there is a figure waiting to
emerge from there.  But I think that for the near term one
must think about people who are already well known.  After
all, Hitler may not have been very well known in the early
1920s.  But he certainly was by the time he came to power
in the early 1930s.
     The only figure besides Lebed (the obvious candidate)
who might fill the bill is Moscow Mayor Luzhkov.  He has
been playing a very nationalistic line recently.  He has
also been playing a kind of Mayor Daley "Moscow works"
line, which might have some appeal (that was supposedly the
appeal of the just-discarded Boris Nemtsov who ran
Nizhny-Novgorod reasonably well).  But, then Luzhkov seems
to have used extreme corruption as well as occasional
strong-arm tactics in his "making Moscow work."  Whatever
happens, allowing corruption to continue or increase will
doom any effort by anybody of any ilk or political or
ideological stripe to seriously improve things in Russia.
Barkley Rosser
On Wed, 26 Aug 1998 23:52:59 -0700 Gary Dymski
<dymski@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I've been reading the Russian posts with great interest and alarm, and
> thanks to the pen-lers who've contributed this vital news.  I have a question
> that has occurred in light of the info received. I keep thinking of parallels to
> Germany in the 1920s in their collapse, except that the role of overseas
> hard-currency demands in the wake of Versailles is now taken by the demands
> of hard-currency holders within the country and without it, in a complicated
> class split. For that matter, the place of the WWI defeat is taken by
> a combination of Afghanistan defeat, lost border skirmishes/control problems,
> and lost USSR.
> OK, the question: is there any leader who may present a plausible
> parallel with Hitler?  There has been a lot of discussion of military and party
> clannish behavior.  And I remember reading about one or more strong military
> types in recent years.  Is anyone waiting in the wings who commands popular
> respect and is a "comer"? There is certainly enough chaos to go around--will
> anyone try to reap this whirlwind?
>
> Gary D.
>
> Gary Dymski
> Department of Economics
> University of California, Riverside
> Riverside, CA 92521-0427
> Phone: 909-787-5037 x1570
> Fax: 909-787-5685
> Email:  dymski@xxxxxxxxxxxx (office)
>              gdymski@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (home)
>

--
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
rosserjb@xxxxxxx